Death Tunnel (2005) - 1.5/4

I can't explain the plot of Death Tunnel without giving away some spoilers. However, since the director edits to telegraph every future revelation in the film far ahead of time, I don't think it matters.

It is pure contrivance. There is a university somewhere in America. In this university, there are some very pretty people: five girls and one guy whose only facial expression is "indignant grimace." There's also a sanitarium that used to house incurable plague victims; bodies were disposed through a tunnel--forgive me, a death tunnel. The pretty girls and the pretty guy all end up in the sanitarium and the one way out is the death tunnel.

Now there are five floors to the sanitarium, five girls, five hours, five ghosts (actually, more like six or seven ghosts, so the ghosts lied about that), and five ancestors to each of the girls and the guy who had some position in the sanitarium.

So there you go. A perfectly contrived situation. You'd think it would play out quite simply with the ghosts dispatching each of the pretty girls--showing a few tits along the way--and the lead girl and pretty guy can kiss and escape.

Essentially that is what happens, except there's a lot of obtrusive editing going on. The director Philip Adrian Booth proudly announces in credits that he has "written, shot, edited, and directed" the picture, but the picture might have been better served had he hired an editor. I'm all for stylish editing, but this is Adobe Premier gone wild. Scenes are occasionally sped up, turn into sepia, we actually see some sepia footage occasionally, there are flashbacks to five minutes ago, flashforwards to somewhere near the end of the film, and some pretty abstract shots that seem to be occurring outside time and space. As if that weren't enough, but the terror of the situation is ruined by the editing and Booth's need to use only jumpscares. I do think Death Tunnel holds a record for the most jump scares per minute. You can tell when a jumpscare occurs, because there's a set jumpscare sound effect that tells you you're supposed to jump. A cloud of blurry fog suddenly looks vaguely human-shaped: cue jumpscare noise.

I believe I understand what the director is trying to do with the editing. He's trying to establishing links between the ghost world, the present world, and the past world. (He's probably trying to hide a low budget, too.) This all comes together in the film's conclusion, which is taken, along with its major monster, right out of Fulci's The House by the Cemetery.

In fact, I think Fulci would have liked Death Tunnel. That's about the highest praise I can think of for this film, make of it what you will. It has a lot of House by the Cemetery and The Beyond in there. Gore shots, a confusing storyline that seems to be an excuse for the visuals, and the bizarre relationships between past and present--that's all Fulci.

Ultimately, it's nice to see a horror film that tries to do something new. The contrivance I spoke of is not necessarily a bad thing, either. It has a certain mathematical elegance. The plot points and some of the dialogue is just preposterous, however. And while some of the jump scares may catch you offguard, most of them miss; and the overarching terror is diffused by the editing. It's not an awful film, just mediocre; the equal of The Messengers, a much larger-budgeted picture.